


Blackout

by schfiftytwo



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombies, F/F, Gen, Name Adaptations, skimmons - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-11 23:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3336923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schfiftytwo/pseuds/schfiftytwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Triskelion goes dark, a dangerous threat courses through the building. Chaos looms, and Skye & Simmons are trapped in the midst of it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shock & Awe

**Author's Note:**

> So after watching a TON of walking dead and whatnot I wrote this little ditty and never got around to really finishing the whole thing. More parts are in the works, if these literature reviews for my work don’t bury me first.
> 
> Anyway. Enjoy, as always! Leave it at the beep if you’ve got some choice words. :)

_Boom._

She awoke with a start. Sitting up in her bed, Jemma Simmons looked around the darkened bunk room.

“Skye…?”

Her eyes adjusting to the darkness, she scanned the room. Not a soul. Turning to her bedside, she saw Skye still asleep. A faint snore pierced the silence, a tiny mumble after that. Tiredly grinning, Jemma rubbed her eyes and noticed something else.

Alarm klaxons were going off. The red hazard light in the hallway illuminated the crack under their door.

“What is going on…?” She grabbed Skye’s shoulders and hoisted her up.

“Skye, WAKE UP. Something’s happening....Wake up!”

“Mmm…”

“SKYE. I’m serious!”

“Mmm ok, ok…what is it…?”

“Listen.”

Jemma’s gaze stayed on Skye as her senses came to. Alarms at this time of night were definitely unusual. Skye lifted herself off her bed and opened the door, peering around the hallway. The corridor lights were all off. Jemma got up and stood behind her, peering over Skye’s shoulder.

She couldn’t see a thing. Far down the hallway, she could hear shouting. A moment later, the unmistakeable sounds of gunshots. Not good.

“Hello?”, Jemma called out. Not a thing. Skye turned to her and closed the door.

“We need to find out what’s going on. What if the others are in trouble?”

Jemma nodded. The others. Coulson. May. Ward. Fitz. She felt a pang of guilt sneaking away from the group the night before to be with Skye; instead of working with the team on refitting The Bus, she had run off to a far-flung residential area of the Triskelion to be with her still-secret girlfriend. It wasn’t merely a purely physical relationship they had; Jemma could live without sex. Of course, she wasn’t above enjoying private time with her lover, and they had a few times before. 

The close intimacy they shared was what she treasured most; what made Jemma most enamored with Skye. It was a constant welcome relief from Jemma’s work, and of course she jumped at the opportunity for some real quality time with Skye, being able to hold her hand, take naps with her, chat freely with her without the fear of someone overhearing. But now, Jemma knew that regardless of where they were, they had to find the others. 

Something had happened.

As the pair walked down the corridor, the hallway became very quiet as the alarms died down. The lights had come back on, a faint dim from their usual brightness. The shouting had disappeared, and all the only sound they could hear was the industrial humming of the building. Jemma happened upon an opened emergency call box, the phone swinging by its cable as if somebody had made a call in a hurry and left. 

Picking up the phone, she listened to nothing but static. _Dead._

“Great….I know there’s a security office down the corridor.” Skye nodded silently, stepping further down the hallway. 

Following behind her, Jemma couldn’t help but admire Skye’s strength in the moment. The hallway was a literal scene from some bad horror movie, and yet Skye’s composure remained strong. She was a true field agent in the making. How lucky was she? She couldn’t believe that her quiet scientist self had stumbled upon her.

Before her musings continued, Jemma was stopped by a figure standing down the corridor to her left. She reached out to Skye and pointed down the hall. Taking the lead, Skye approached the figure. Jemma felt uncomfortable as the silence of the hallway continued. 

She could hear the figure laboriously breathing, standing erect. She wasn’t sure, but she noticed a slight sway in the figure’s stance.

Skye moved closer to the figure. “Hello…?”

No response. She tried again, reaching out to tap the figure’s shoulder.

Almost immediately the figure turned around, and the pair screamed.

Jemma was a mix of horrified and fascinated. The figure was a man, a SHIELD strike team soldier. His face held a blank expression, his cheeks sunken in like a living skull. His mouth was open, a flash of red running down the corner of his mouth. He had a firm grasp on Skye, snarling at her with a deep rasp and reaching out to her with his gaping jaws. 

His eyes were filled with a primal violence, almost as if he was trying to…

“Jemma, HELP ME…!”

Skye’s shout spurned Jemma into action. She grabbed the soldier from behind and pulled him back away from Skye as hard as she could. His strength was immense, almost inhuman. He pushed Jemma back with ease, throwing her back. Skye fell to the ground with the soldier snarling over her.

Reeling from her impact against the wall, Jemma came to and jumped on the soldier’s back, pulling his head away from Skye. As she heaved him back, she felt his head turn. A sharp, digging pain shot through her arm as the soldier dug his jaw into her forearm. She yelped as she felt her muscles rip apart, the bones in her arm fracturing with each bite.

As her eyes filled with tears, she saw through the blur Skye grabbing the soldier’s head and snapping it around. The squelch of snapping vertebrae echoed in the hallway as his figure fell motionless to the ground. Jemma fell with him, her arm slipping from his now-limp jaws. Fire was coursing through her body, and she let out a moan as she began to shut down. As consciousness began to flutter from her, she could hear Skye’s muffled cries. 

She felt herself being lifted up. Her mind was like a racing cloud; filled with thoughts but unable to form a single word for Skye to hear. She felt another pang of pain, this time like she was being bitten all over again. She felt her throat fill with another scream, and heard Skye’s voice again telling her it was going to be ok. At the rate things were going, she was sure that things weren’t ok. She felt more tightness in her arm, followed by a wave of numbness. 

Finally, it all stopped, and she fell into darkness.


	2. Panic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Jemma seriously injured and unconscious, Skye is left with few options.

“JEMMA! Stay with me here, we’re going to get you some help, just STAY WITH ME…!”

Skye looked upon her girlfriend in shock. Her right arm had a grotesque bite mark from that freak soldier they found, and it was bleeding profusely. Her mind began to race as her worry for Jemma was cleared away by her field agent instincts. 

She had to get the wound bound to stop the bleeding. She tore off a corner of her shirt and made it into a quick field dressing, wrapping Jemma’s arm tightly. She kept a hand on her face, trying to keep her attention straight.

“Jemma, come on, you gotta stay with me. Please….!”

Skye’s eyes began to fill with tears as she watched Jemma slip into unconsciousness. She quickly checked her thready pulse. Knowing she needed real medical help, she picked Jemma up and carried her quickly through the hallway, trying to find anyone who could help her.

“HELP! Please! Somebody... _anybody_...! My friend is hurt!”

She ran as fast as she could through the eerie hallways. On the walls here and there a splash of blood, scorch marks from explosives. The smell of smoke began to emanate from all around her.

Seeing a door sign labeled “Security”, she grabbed the handle. As it gave way, she flung herself and Jemma into the room and locked the door behind her. Skye frantically searched around the office, checking cabinets for aid kits. She felt around inside a cabinet, finding some bandages and a syringe of morphine.

Letting her instincts take over, Skye tore off the now-soiled tourniquet on Jemma’s arm and examined her wound more closely in the fluorescent light of the room.

 _Fuck. This is bad…_ Skye mused. Jemma’s arm was all but ok. A portion of her arm was gone, bitten clear off. What remained was a bloody mess. She grabbed the syringe and plunged it into Jemma’s thigh. Ripping off some of the bandages she found, she began to clean what she could from Jemma’s arm and bound it again tightly. Her girlfriend cried out in pain. Her screams became whimpers, and her heart began to slow down as she fell unconscious once again.

Skye looked upon her handiwork with absolute fear in her eyes. She knew Jemma needed a doctor, and soon. With a wound like that, it was only a matter of time before infection set in, even if she had stopped the bleeding. She sat back on the floor, breathing heavily. She wasn’t sure what to do. They had just been attacked, **ATTACKED** , by a crazy SHIELD agent. 

He seemed feral, like he had rabies or something. He must have been sick. Maybe he was psychotic, and just escaped the infirmary, and found himself in the residences of the Triskelion, and just stopped moving in the hallway, and…

Her heart began to beat faster. She imagined his blank but piercing eyes snarling at her just a moment ago. They were filled with such rage, like a deep hunger. Her mind began to put together her racing thoughts, coming to conclusions too crazy to take seriously.

“No. No, that’s insane. He couldn’t have been a…a _zombie_ …! There’s just no way. There’s no such thing!”

But Skye knew better than to disregard the impossible. SHIELD dealt with impossible things on a daily basis; hell, they brought Coulson back from the dead after the Battle of New York, and he brought her back from the brink after getting shot by Ian Quinn.

But…zombies? There was no way. Zombies were a comic book thing, the theme of a TV show, or a crazy story you tell to your fandom-afflicted friends. There was just no way it could happen.

Looking down at her unconscious girlfriend, she couldn’t help but smile begrudgingly. Even amid the chaos, severely wounded, Jemma’s face was calm. Calm even on the brink, when things were going crazy. Sure, Skye had training as a field agent, but that didn’t mean her nerves disappeared in the face of danger. Even “The Cavalry” had her share of scares.

“Mm…What do I do, Jemma…? What’s happening…?”

Skye could feel herself reverting back to a child, her hands trembling. She felt a wave of tears coming down her face. She put her head down.

 _No._ she thought to herself. 

_I can’t lose it now. Not when Jemma needs me. I need to get her out of here._

She stifled her tears, wiping them off her face. She had to do something, and crying wasn’t going to change anything. Getting up, Skye surveyed the room they were both in. A few desks here, the cabinet where she found the bandages and morphine, a flashlight mounted on the wall, and a small surveillance panel. 

Skye walked up to the surveillance mount and touched her hand to the screen, activating the system. A trio of security feeds appeared before her. The first was the hallway they had just came from, the other showed the exterior of the residential area, and the last showed the path toward the main concourse of the Triskelion.

In each were figures, aimlessly walking around. They all had the same look on their faces as the soldier they had encountered. They were all those “things”. And there were a lot. Dozens of them walking the hallways, coming closer to the hallway they had escaped. The noise must have brought them closer. 

In one monitor, she saw rustling from the hedges around the compound. A frazzled-looking SHIELD scientist hopped out of the bushes, his lab coat red with blood. He quickly looked around the courtyard and began to run, before a trio of “things” ran up to him. He screamed out loud, the camera mic picking up his cries as the mob of “things” brought him down. They dug into his arms, torso, neck, and legs. They ripped him apart, and kept going back for more.

Skye watched the scene play out in front of her in horror. Those people, those “ _things_ ”…they were eating him. 

Ravenously eating him. Like watching a movie play out in real life. 

She couldn’t believe her eyes. Cupping her mouth, she sank to the floor and began to tear up. Wincing her eyes shut, she got up and wiped her face on her remaining sleeve.

They had to get out of that office and find the others. But she couldn’t take Jemma with her, not in her condition. They would be sitting ducks for those… _zombies_.

Skye closed her eyes. She had to leave Jemma behind. She could find help, do something and bring help back. The door could be secured, Jemma could be safe here to rest. She wouldn’t be long, she’d be back for her, the morphine would keep her asleep and out of pain. 

Skye pushed the thoughts of how serious Jemma’s wounds were and what would happen to her if she didn’t come back to the back of her mind. She would come back, and Skye would be damned if she didn’t come back for her girlfriend.

Wiping away the sweat on her brow, she went over to Jemma’s still form and gently kissed her forehead. She held her soft cheek in her hand and ran her palm down to Jemma’s shoulder.

“Just rest here. I’ll be back. I won’t leave you behind, Jemma, I promise.”

Grabbing the flashlight off the wall, she stepped out of the office, locking the door behind her. 

Time was ticking.


	3. Exit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skye searches for help through the chaos.

Skye turned on her flashlight and shone its light down the hallway. She walked slowly and surely, making sure she made as little noise as possible. After seeing what happened to that SHIELD scientist back in the security office, she wasn’t going to take any chances becoming a zombie’s dinner.

_Zombie._

The reality of the word was still unnerving to her. Zombies? She remembered reading comics, watching TV, playing video games that focused on zombies. They were the _classic_ horror movie gag. 

But now the joke was far gone. People were dying, chief among them her girlfriend Jemma Simmons. She couldn’t let herself get caught up in the details; what she had to do was get help as fast as she could.

Skye turned a corner, entering into the main entrance lobby of the Triskelion’s residential area. The glass surrounding the atrium was cracked, even shattered in some places. The still bodies of SHIELD agents and security staff were sprawled throughout the lobby.

Her mind was filled with incredulity. 

_How did this all happen…? I don’t understand…how did these things get here…where are all the survivors…?_

It just didn’t make any sense to her. SHIELD was the most sophisticated special operations agency on the planet; how could their headquarters reach this kind of devastation seemingly unchecked? There had to be survivors somewhere. She and Jemma couldn’t be the only survivors.

_They just couldn’t._

As she moved through the atrium, she tripped over a fallen pane of glass. Falling forwards onto it, she broke her fall on a neighboring body. Hitting the floor, she came face to face with the blank eyes of a dead agent. 

Her eyes went wide as she saw his jaw begin to move ever so slightly. His body began to lift itself toward her, releasing a gargling, threatening gasp. Skye brought herself up quickly and noticed the other bodies on the floor begin to get up, each of them erupting with guttural roars of bloodlust.

 _“Shit shit shit….!”_ Skye thought. She scanned the room around her; no escape routes. She spied a large shard of glass on the ground. Picking it up, Skye gulped as she raised the shard to defend herself against the horde arising before her. 

“Ten…twenty…twenty-five……fuck, I can’t hold them off at once…”

She felt herself begin to tremble.

“I…I’m sorry, Jemma…!”

As she took her first step forward to attack, a booming noise emanated from behind her. Zombies around her dropped to the ground, finally lifeless. She turned around and saw several dark figures running toward her, guns blazing.

**“SKYE, GET DOWN!”**

She knew the voice. Ducking down, she covered her head as she heard the symphony of gunfire all around her.


	4. Saviors

_“Coulson, we need to go NOW.”_

_“NO, We need to find Skye and Simmons. I know they’re out there somewhere!”_

_“The Triskelion is too big to search on our own. There’s already so many gone, how could you expect to find them?”_

_“WE NEED TO TRY. WE CAN’T LEAVE THEM BEHIND.”_

_Sigh._

Agent Melinda May stood quietly in the operations control room. Around her, the burning computer stations linked to SHIELD’s global satellite network filled the cavernous room with an acrid smoke. Around her, the bodies of zombies she had dispatched moments before lay sprawled.

It had been an incredible day so far. Arriving at the Triskelion only hours before, May expected to find some time to rest before Coulson received his next assignment. She had thoughts of visiting the less-traveled sections of the SHIELD headquarters, admiring the view across the Potomac into Washington DC. But before she had even a chance to enjoy any moment to herself, the base was thrust into chaos. 

Alarms, soldiers, agents, scientists, civilians, all running in terror throughout the building. The details were spotty, some reports of SHIELD personnel attacking other agents. She saw a group of scientists in the hangar bay of the Triskelion attack a flight controller after taking dozens of bullets to the gut. The scientists jumped as soon as they got close enough, digging their jaws into the controller’s exposed neck as he yelled in desperation. Never in all her years of service had she seen anything like this.

When she found the rest of the team sans Skye and Simmons holed up in The Bus, everyone was hastily arguing about what to do. The base would be locked down, the PA had said. Everyone left would be asked to hide in place until security swept the entire building. 

Personally, May wanted to make sure Skye and Simmons were safe; they were one of her own, and she had grown attached to them. But her refined soldier senses told her that such a search would be clear suicide. This was no normal operation, not with what was happening outside. They would need backup, more intelligence.

She was confident of her team’s abilities to be sure, but she knew that if they attempted a rescue it was likely to end badly.

But now she found herself here, in the core of the Triskelion, searching for Skye and Simmons.

“ _So much for this not being a combat op..._ ” she thought to herself.

Enemy soldiers, alien threats, she could handle. But…zombies? Nothing she had learned at the Academy could have prepared her to face an undead onslaught.

She clenched her fists, feeing the squelch of bare knuckles on blood. Taking a breath, she surveyed the room and saw no other threats. Touching her hand to her radio headpiece, she gave the all clear to the rest of the team in the adjoining hallway.

Emerging from the smoke, Coulson, Fitz, and Ward cautiously walked up to May. Their eyes traced the room for movement she may have missed.

May turned to them and nodded. Taking the lead, she walked up to the gunshot-riddled main control console and tried to reboot the system manually.

“Fitz, get up there and help May. We need eyes on the rest of the base to plan our next move.” Coulson said succinctly. 

“Ward, eyes on the exits, entryways and the mezzanine. We don’t want any more surprises than we need.”

Fitz and Ward silently nodded, moving to their assignments.

Looking up from the console, May observed the orders with a familiar admiration. She had known Coulson for a very, very long time, and his leadership poise and skill was second only to Director Fury’s. Anyone who had ever been under his command offered him the utmost respect, and she was no exception. Even in this apocalyptic nightmare, she could think of nobody else to have at her side. Even with his trademark suit splattered with blood, the seams tearing from the constant fighting and close-quarters combat, he never seemed to lose a beat in watching over the team. His team.

Looking off to her side, Fitz was staring intently at the damaged control panel, trying to rework the computer to get it in operating condition. She had only known Fitz for a short time, but like Ward, Skye, and Simmons, May had a great deal of respect for his craft. At first, she had reservations about having a scientist on board at all, _let alone two very, very young scientists on board together_. 

Over time, she watched him grow into an integral part of the team as well, the constant tinkerer and expert technologist. But what had happened had clearly shaken him. His companion Simmons was missing, along with Skye. Lost somewhere in the dark void of the Triskelion, surrounded by those…things.

“Sir, I’ve got the console ready to go, feeding the status reports on the base to the main screen.”

Fitz’s Scottish drawl echoed ever so slightly in the room, causing May to bat her eyes around the room. 

_No threats._

Her eyes wandered slowly around the room as the reports initialized. They eventually fell on the last member of their team, Grant Ward. His steely expression was nearly as sharp as hers. His training as a field agent made him a deadly adversary and an efficient solider of the highest caliber. 

Their connection was a bit more... _murky_. On the surface, they were allies, comrades working under the same boss. As soldiers, they could not afford to develop feelings for each other, despite their sexual trysts in the past. May remembered the way he touched her, the way he looked out for her. 

To a point, she appreciated his gestures. But…her heart wasn’t interested in another complication. She had enough on her mind to worry about. A man, even one as able as Ward, was exactly what May didn’t need. At the end of they day, she was glad Ward was fighting on their side. She couldn’t imagine him as an adversary. 

Or as a zombie. 

The reports came up onscreen as she finished her thought, and her eyes widened as the reports and camera feeds came up across the main screen. 

The dead and undead spread throughout the complex. The three-foot concrete and steel-reinforced blast doors sealing off the base from the outside world. The recorded scenes of the Triskelion security forces being overrun by hordes of zombies, their bullets all but effective at stopping their advance. The residential area in tatters, with bodies of off-duty agents littered across its courtyard.

She pursed her lips, eyeing each feed with growing uncertainty.

“Coulson." she said quietly, "It doesn’t look good. For any of us.”

Coulson's eyes, locked on the screens, turned toward May. His normally thoughtful gaze now carried a pained edge.

“We’re going to find them”, he said. “We’re not leaving them behind. They would have done the same for any of us, and we owe them that.”

His declaration was noble, but the facts as they seemed to May looked nearly insurmountable. She began to have a nagging feeling in the back of her mind that they were going to find their end somewhere in the maze of halls that surrounded them. 

The silence of the room was almost palpable; May knew that everyone - even Coulson, perhaps - was thinking the same.

Before Coulson could let off a word, Fitz shouted out to them.

“I found them.”

Everyone’s eyes turned to the screen. Fitz pulled up a high-resolution image of the courtyard cameras of the Triskelion’s residential area. Walking steadily into view was a shaken, sullen-looking Skye. 

Around her were the undead, ready to pounce.

The cogs of May's honed soldiering reflexes began to turn in earnest.

“We need to go now. Skye is walking into a slaughter. Simmons can’t be far behind.”

Coulson nodded. As quickly as they came into the control room they all dashed out, with May in the lead.

She unholstered her handgun and checked her ammunition as she ran. She counted six bullets, the last six she had. May was sure to make them all count. 


	5. Behind You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team finds Skye, but a surprise spurns them to action.

The sound of gunfire around her was deafening. She huddled under a fallen girder in the atrium, covering her ears in an attempt to stop the growing ringing inside her head. Skye watched as the dozens of zombies that were around her dropped to the ground, their now-lifeless bodies splatting onto the already blood-slicked ground.

Skye could feel her heart beating out of her chest. Before she even realized it had started, the cacophony ended, and she dropped her head down to silence the still-present ringing in her ears. As she sat, a familiar voice took its place.

_**“Skye…? Skye! Talk to me, snap out of it…! SKYE!”** _

_Coulson…?_

She looked up and saw him, crouched in front of her. His suit was in tatters, his face dirtied from sweat, dirt, and blood. His expression, clearly fatigued, still carried the thoughtfulness Skye remembered.

Overcome from what had just happened to her, Skye leapt into Coulson’s arms and began to cry. She could feel his embrace as she sputtered out her thanks.

“I-I thought I was going to die…t-they w-were everywhere, and I didn’t have anywhere to run to…where d-did you all come from…?”

“Shh, don’t worry Skye”, he said quietly. His hand stroked the back of her head in understanding. “We’re here now. We’re going to get out of here, together.”

Skye wiped her tears on Coulson’s shoulder and looked up at him.

“C-Coulson, we need to get Jemma help first. She’s…She’s been hurt.”

He nodded at her, and pulled her up.

“We’ll find her, and we’ll get her out of here too. Nobody is getting left behind here.”

Skye cracked a smile out of the corner of her mouth as she rubbed her eyes. Help was here. 

Jemma was going to be ok.

As she got up, she heard Fitz yell out.

**“May, BEHIND YOU!”**

Fitz sat down on the ground, his handgun clanging to the floor. Now was finally a moment for him to take in what was going on.

Not more than 24 hours ago, he had been with Jemma Simmons, working on restocking the lab supplies in The Bus. He remembered her unpacking boxes of rubber gloves and petri dishes, talking about how she was excited to be back at the Triskelion. She mentioned grabbing new chem-packs from the research labs and finding a new lab coat to replace hers, and before he knew it she had gone off without another word, without even finishing her supply stocking.

And now he was here. Dirty, tired, shaken to his core. He had watched people die, seen people get eaten by zombies. Real zombies.

He’d shot some too. The blood of one zombie he’d killed had splattered all over his now-wrinkled brown button-up shirt.

All he wanted to do was get out of there. They had found Skye, now all they needed was Jemma.

_Beat._

Jemma. His colleague since SHIELD Academy, his forever-friend, confidante, and other half. His better half, even. Perhaps in another time he would have told her how he felt, how he had wished that her eyes would meet his and find an instant connection. 

He knew about her relationship with Skye; hell, he had been the only person she was comfortable telling. 

_”Jemma, could you hand me that reaction vessel? I need to check the formation quotients for my compound…”_

_“I checked it for you, its within normal limits…”_

_“Ah, great. Could you chart that in my notes for me, I’m kind of occupied with this here…”_

_“…Fitz. I…I need to tell you something.”_

_“Hmm? What is it, Jemma?”_

_“I…erm…I’m…”_

_“You’re…? You’re what? Sick? Hungry? Or wait. Don’t tell me. You’ve got another one of these crazy ideas to swipe lab materials and do some *unsanctioned* experiments; don’t you remember the last time-“_

_“I’m-in-love-with-Skye-and-we’re-dating-and-I-had-to-tell-you-because-I-can’t-keep-it-a-secret-anymore…!!”_

_“…Oh.”_

To a point, he respected his colleague’s choice, and would do everything he could for Jemma. Her happiness was of tantamount importance to him.

Didn’t make thinking about the “what-ifs” any easier to deal with, but at the end of the day he could always enjoy her company in the laboratory.

When they found Skye, there was no sign of Jemma. And now Fitz couldn’t help but think the worst.

_Don’t let her become one…one of those…things…_

He looked up from his thoughts, catching a flash of white behind May. He’d seen enough people tonight get killed, the movement behind her was all too familiar.

He grabbed his handgun and stumbled upwards, yelling as loud as he could. He would be damned if anyone else got hurt.

**“May, BEHIND YOU!”**

That had been less complicated than expected. 

Agent Melinda May surveyed the carnage they had wrought on the zombies to rescue Skye. Walking around the felled bodies, she couldn’t help but feel pity for these innocent people. Most of the zombies here were civilians and scientists, working as part of SHIELD’s non-field operations. They had nothing to do with this nightmare, and had paid the ultimate price for it and then some.

May had seen people die before, witnessed field agents cut down in the line of duty. But…to see these innocents die twice over. It made her stomach turn. If there was somebody responsible for this atrocity, she would be there to do justice to these poor souls.

She cocked her handgun and ejected the last spent casing from its chamber. 

Hopefully she didn’t have to shoot anything else before they got out of there.

**“May, BEHIND YOU!”**

The Scot’s voice echoed through the atrium as May swung around, her already-closed fist ready to contact whatever was behind them.

Her knuckle made contact with flesh as she saw her target fall backward. She kicked up a large shard of glass into her free hand and held it in front of her, ready to defend herself.

The team had rallied over to May in response to Fitz’s scream. May held the glass in her hand, her eyes darting around the area. She could feel her grip on the glass beginning to cut into her palms.

Looking down at her fallen target, May observed him closely for any movement. He was wearing a pair of slacks, with a disheveled light blue-navy blue shirt-sweater combo. His SHIELD lab coat was stained with dirt and blood. Where his nose was supposed to be was a bloody peak of broken cartilage. A cracked pair of tortoise-rimmed glasses lay alongside him. She noticed as well that he lacked the grey pallor of the zombies she had encountered before.

Coulson put his shoulder on May’s, his gun drawn at the man on the ground. His arm moved down hers, and lowered the glass shard still cutting into her hand.

“Stay back, May. I don’t think he’s a zombie.”

He turned to Ward, already pointing his assault rifle at the man on the ground.

“Watch our six; we’ve made a lot of noise. Don’t need any more surprises.”

Coulson proceed slowly toward the man on the ground. 

“My name is Agent Phil Coulson; this is my team - Agents Melinda May, Grant Ward, Leo Fitz, and Skye. Identify yourself.”

The man on the ground groaned, moving his arm slowly to his bashed-in face. Sitting up, his still-closed eyes formed a pained wince.

“UGHHH **bollocks** , that **HURT** ….!!”

His heavy Scottish accent rivaled Fitz’s. He looked up at the team, picked up his glasses, and stood up with a slight stumble.

“Ugh...Dr. Alec Hardy, Research & Development Division, Level 6." he said through his wince. "I suppose that was a… _mistake_ …sneaking up on you. Apologies. I heard the commotion and thought somebody was in trouble.”

Coulson dropped his gun.

“What were you doing running around here? You realize what’s happened here?”

“Yes, I do. I was working on the virus that caused this whole thing.”

The team’s eyes collectively opened wide.

“What did you say…?” Coulson said, an edge of urgency to his tone.

“I was assigned to work on a particular 0-8-4 that was brought in by a field team about a week ago, an organic mass recovered from the Hudson River. My research group began working on it not even a day ago. We were making progress with charting its biological signature when it…became _unstable_.”

This time May interjected. “Wait, what do you mean ‘ _unstable_ ’?”

“…I don’t know how it happened.” he said, wiping the blood off his broken nose. “The damn thing released a cloud of spores while we were carrying out our analysis and it killed my team. They were screaming for help, choking on their own blood….And then….”

His eyes began to fall down, his reminiscence stopping him.

“My team…my colleagues…They….reanimated. Clawed at the observation window, tried to break through the quarantine door. By then I activated the quarantine protocols, but the infection spread faster than anything I’ve ever seen. Damn near killed me too; I was one of the lucky ones.”

He paused, his voice becoming hoarse.

“...Or unlucky.”

Fitz chimed in. “That’s impossible. How could something escape R&D so easily? Our labs are some of the best in the world; something must have gone wrong.”

Hardy sighed. “Look, if I knew, I would tell you. We’re all in this mess; I didn’t plan for it. The lockdown has us trapped inside until someone from the outside finds us. I’ve been dodging zombies ever since I found my way out R&D, and now I’m here. That's all I know.”

Coulson sighed. “Well. We’re not leaving any survivors behind. You’re welcome to come with us. But first, we have one of our own we still need to find.” 

He turned to Skye, her face still wide with an unspoken anxiety. 

“Skye. Where is Jemma. Is she OK?”

She looked him right in the eye. “J-Jemma got hurt….she got bitten by one of those things…I tried my best to help her but I had to leave her in the security office down in the residential area. I…I don’t know…I don’t know if she’s…He said this thing acts fast, that it killed so many people already…I don’t know if she’s still…”

Coulson stopped her. 

“Skye. I’m sure you did all you could. She will be fine, I promise you.”

Skye’s eyes softened slightly with his words.

“I'm sorry, d-did…did you say Jemma? As in…Dr. Jemma Simmons…?”

Coulson turned around. “Yes. Do you know her?”

“Know her?!” Hardy said, a slight giddiness to his voice. “Dr. Simmons’ work was groundbreaking for my current research! The techniques she pioneered in bioinorganic synthesis helped to guide the work I was doing before the 0-8-4 came into my lab. She’s...one of your team?”

Coulson nodded. Hardy walked up to him, a serious glint to his expression.

“Listen. This virus is nasty shit. It works fast. But if Dr. Simmons is somewhere out there, I’m your man to help her. While we didn’t get anywhere near a full analysis of the 0-8-4, I’m sure the data we did get could help synthesize something to stabilize her. I’ll be damned if we lose a mind like that to this bastard of a virus.”

As he spoke, Ward’s voice pierced his offer.

“Sir...? We have movement outside. I count 20 coming from the courtyard. I think it’s time to move...and fast.”

Hardy pulled out a handgun from the inside of his coat.

“Lead the way, Agent Coulson. Looks like we don’t have a lot of time to spare.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the name is def a s/o to DI Alec Hardy from Broadchurch. If you haven't seen it, it's an AMAZING BBC police procedural drama.
> 
> More to come of course; I've got my board up for this one so I just need the time to write it all out.
> 
> Hope you enjoy. :)


	6. Test

_Shit. That was a **solid** punch._

Alec Hardy was having one a hell of a day. Rubbing the blood off of his now-broken nose, his mind began to work through his options. He had tried to sneak up on this unsuspecting field agent, but he wasn’t expecting such a level of self-defense finesse. Or the fact that he had stumbled on an entire **TEAM** of agents.

If anything, he was expecting...more of the same.

The same confused, befuddled, lost souls he’d come across before. He remembered their faces, realizing they had found another human, someone they could stick with until help came.

_“You’re the first friendly face I’ve come across.”_

He would come up to them, tell them his story about how he knew what happened, how he was there to witness the infection of “Patient Zero”. His descriptions of the carnage, of how his research team was overcome by an alien virus and he was powerless to save them.

Every so often the details would change, but with each telling the reaction was the same.

_“Oh my, that’s so tragic, Doctor…”_

_“Well damn. That’s quite a story you have there, Dr. Hardy…”_

_“You need to come with us; maybe we can find a cure for this virus in my lab! I worked on similar organic 0-8-4’s, perhaps you can use my data…”_

They’d be put at ease by his situation, and offer their help to him. SHIELD agents stuck together, especially when catastrophe struck. Fury’s mantras and the Academy did well with these folks.

Of course, every now and then an incredulous field agent or overzealous scientist would prod his story, and by that point he simply discarded with them. Bullets did wonders on zombies, that was certain.

Hardy found as well that they did the trick with the occasional agent asking too many questions. 

All in all, such a perfect combination of blind trust and need for security made his subject collection so much easier.

His methods were simple enough. He would take his newly-made companions throughout the base, exhausting their ammunition and energy on hordes of zombies. Eventually, he’d guide them to his lab, and while their backs were turned Hardy would stun them, or drug them, or knock them out. He’d drag their unconscious bodies to his operating tables and inject them with his new serums, refined and reworked over the countless subjects he’d obtained.

Their bodies would begin to sweat, their screams of agony piercing the silence of his lab until they could take no more. Their final breaths brought a stillness to the air.

And then, it would _happen_.

First a gasp, then a low moan, taking a crescendo into a growl. They would struggle against their restraints, gasping to satisfy their primal hunger. He had seen it happen countless times, but it always filled him with such _rapture_ as they shrugged off their human chains.

He would take blood and tissue samples from them and store them away for analysis. Afterwards, he would dispatch his subjects and store the bodies away for dissection in his freezers. 

Sometimes a subject would exhibit… _different_ …tendencies. Extreme physical aggression, defensive and offensive mutations of appendages, the whole gamut. For them, he used secure cells to contain them, always for future examination.

In all, Hardy had amassed a growing collection of samples and subjects. He supposed it was the only right way to truly get at his life’s work; SHIELD had disavowed his research, telling him his experiments crossed lines far beyond those of scientific inquiry and ethics. They stripped him of his rank, his credentials. Overnight, he became the black sheep of the science world. Nobody wanted anything to do with his work, hoping he would slip away into the background with his so-called _crazed_ ideas.

 _They_ had a different plan, however.

The day he was escorted from the Triskelion, a more enlightened group of professionals swept in and took him under their wing. 

They were truly interested in his work in neural reanimation and believed in its higher purpose. He didn’t much buy into their whole idea of humans and their lack of ability to be trusted with freedom, but the perks were phenomenal. They gave him money, teams of researchers, and state-of-the-art labs to conduct his work. In time, he had created a serum that was able to successfully reanimate a dead primate brain in vivo. His supervisors praised every new iteration of his creation, until they finally gave him an ultimatum.

_**Return to SHIELD. Continue your work there. Report to us upon its completion.** _

The short of it was simple: his employers were in a bind; they needed his work to develop some assets they could use as significant leverage against their competitors. They wanted the end result of his work, and he would deliver, no questions asked.

At this rate, everything was going well ahead of schedule. He didn’t expect the level of virulence his creation had developed, but it didn’t matter. In his mind he had already created exactly what his superiors desired.

Hardy thought all this to himself as he interacted with the team he had stumbled upon. His introductions worked, his story caught their attention. Highly trained, capable field agents now at his mercy. It wasn't without a downside this time around; the news of Dr. Jemma Simmons pained him. He was truly a fan of her work. Her loss would be a true tragedy.

All that however paled in comparison to his plan before him. The final test of his creation was about to commence. Validation of his work was at hand, SHIELD be damned. He made a mental note to offer his colleague mercy when the time came; after all, if it wasn’t for her none of this would have been possible.

He could only just hold back the tinges of excitement in his voice as he spurned the group forward.

“Lead the way, Agent Coulson. Looks like we don’t have a lot of time to spare.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a BLAST to write. I am so sad it has taken so long to get this out, but it's just been crazy with all the school, snow, and commuting nightmares.
> 
> Anyway, more to come as always. I promise you.


	7. Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma & Skye grapple with the situation at hand, while their unseen enemy gets closer to his ultimate goal.

The pain ebbed and flowed with each passing second, a dull throb becoming a spike that seemed to dig all the way to her core and back. The haze cleared, long enough for Jemma to name her thoughts. 

She knew that Skye had given her some sort of painkiller, some kind of opiate…? Morphine…? The varying levels of mental clarity she was experiencing was a dead giveaway. 

Her senses began to sputter as she tried to remember what had all happened. She could hear voices, the yelling leaving a ring in her ears, until silence replaced it. Memories filled her mind, replaying like a broken reel.

Their unmade bed. The darkness of the hallway. The soldier. Screams for help. The pain.

Skye’s tears running down her face.

And then her voice, echoing a promise to return.

She tried to keep her composure; her mental leapfrogging was certainly more than the result of the drugs in her system. The injuries she sustained were taking a toll on her; all the morphine did at this point was keep her from going into total shock. Jemma struggled to open her eyes, crusted shut from tears and dirt. She moved her bleary eyes around the room. An office, ransacked. On the wall, inactive security video feeds.

She attempted to speak.

“H…Hello….? S-Skye…..” Her words came out gritty, her throat suddenly becoming prickly and painful. No response.

She tried to roll onto her uninjured arm, and felt a searing sting course through her body. Her bandages, now soaked through with blood, made a squelching noise. A warm liquid began to run down her arm.

_That isn’t normal._

Jemma craned her aching neck toward her arm and opened her eyes as wide as she could.

What she saw made her wish that she hadn’t. Her jaw fell as she began to process through her mental fog.

Her arm looked simply terrible. The bandage covering her wound had turned a sickly deep red, almost black. Around the bandage across her arm were tendrils of black, almost like traces of her capillaries. Her normally healthy skin had taken a sickly grey tinge.

“No…No…” she strained. She choked back a cough that turned into a steady stream of tears. Her breaths became more laborious as she felt her chest begin to tighten. Her head began to fill with noise again, this time a series of bangs.

She could feel her heart beating faster and faster, straining her chest even more. Jemma began to cry out, pleading wordlessly for her torture to end, for it all to go away.

The pain began anew, spreading throughout her body. Her eyes slammed shut as the sensations began to paralyze her.

As the banging noises around her overcame her senses, Jemma noticed that her cries had become nonsensical; far from just utterances of pain. If anything, they seemed more in line with…

Growling.

“Three…two….ONE….!!!”

Skye rammed into the door alongside May and Ward. The hinges creaked slightly as the door frame gave way. Moving the door aside, Skye was the first inside as she went over to Jemma, still lying on the floor.

“Jemma, I’m back…! I found the others, they’re here and we’re going to get you out of here!”

She cupped her palm on Jemma’s cheek, feeling her cold skin. Looking down at her bandaged arm, Skye’s eyes went wide at the spreading decay of Jemma’s wound.

_“How is she doing…?”_

_“This isn’t the best place to be if those zombies show up here; we’re gonna get boxed in.”_

Skye noticed Jemma’s lips mouthing noiselessly. Before long the silence transformed into a muted grunt, building with strength with each raspy gasp. The sound turned Skye’s stomach as she felt her heart begin to beat a mile a minute. Her hand began to tremble on Jemma’s cheek

“Jemma….Jemma, I’m here, please stop that….Jemma….! No, please….No, no…NO!”

Her voice began to crack as she began to choke back tears. It couldn’t be happening, not now. She hadn’t been long, there was no way that Jemma had gotten bad enough to…

_“What’s happening?”_

_“Is that noise coming from….”_

_“Ward, don’t you point that at her…”_

**Get away from her.**

Skye felt a hand on her shoulder move her aside as Dr. Hardy took her place alongside Jemma. She looked at his face, his eyes scanning Jemma’s injuries. He brought his face close to her arm, examining her grey-tinged skin.

“Wh-what’s happening to her…? She’s making that terrible noise…Is she….Is she b-becoming one of…” Skye sputtered.

He looked wordlessly at Jemma, his lips pursed.

“It’s beginning. Her wound has begun to spread whatever it is that transforms...well, _us into them_.”

Skye’s world seemed to stop with his words. Around her she could hear the team shouting, pleading with him, prodding his reply. There was no way this was all real.

“Doctor Hardy, there has to be a way to stop this, to save her….She cannot become one them!” she said, her hand grabbing his shoulder.

“STOP THAT." he snapped, "I **cannot** think with all your yammering!”

He sighed, looking at Skye with serious eyes. His jaw was visibly clenched.

“Look. I can’t stop the transformation, my work stopped before I had a chance to even really figure out what this thing was. I've seen this countless times, what is happening is certain. But...I have an idea. Something to at least slow it down, give us more time…”

He raised Jemma’s uninjured wrist. Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out a syringe and plunged it into Jemma’s arm. The groans emanating from her lips began to subside, until her normal breathing resumed.

“This will slow her cellular metabolism to a crawl; in theory it should also slow the extent of her infection…hopefully long enough to find some better options.”

Skye nodded at him, her heartbeat beginning to ache with anxiety. She turned her eyes to Jemma’s now-quiet form, unsure of what they were going to do. She was infected. It was only a matter of time until Jemma became…one of them.

“Doctor.” she said, “…you need to help her. Please. Jemma can’t become one of them. She….she just can’t.”

Her mind flashed to memories of when hers and Jemma’s relationship was still beginning. The awkward first conversations, the coffee dates in between missions, lab time, and private time, and of course their first kiss.

What she finally fixated on was a relatively recent moment, one that happened right before their trip to the Triskelion.

_They were lying in Skye’s bed, on the Bus. The sound of the engines had lulled the two of them nearly to sleep. As she closed her eyes, Skye heard Jemma’s voice whisper into her neck._

_“Skye…I hope this never ends.”_

_She smiled to herself._

_“Why would it end, sweetheart?”_

_“I don’t know…There was that time you very nearly died. And then your missions with May and Coulson and all the others out in the field while I’m stuck at the Holotable with Fitz…I get so worried…”_

_Skye felt a pang of regret at her words. “Jemma…as long as I’ve got a say in things, I promise you that this won’t end. I'm not going anywhere.”_

_Skye sat up and faced Jemma, her eyes glowing in the soft light._

_“I promise you. I won’t leave.”_

_Jemma smiled this time, the trace of what Skye thought was a tear running down her cheek._

_"Ok, Skye." she said, and pulled her in for a kiss._

Skye grabbed Doctor Hardy’s arm and forced his gaze on hers. She could see a blankness on his face, as if he was lost in thought.

“Doctor Hardy. Did you hear me…? You’re the only one who can do anything about this.”

His stare broke, and he blinked at her, seeming to take at what she said.

“Of course.” he told her, his voice now soft, “I will do everything I can.”

He picked up Jemma’s limp body and held her up, motioning to Skye and the rest of the team.

“My lab. It’s not far from here; we need to take her there before we go anywhere else.”

Skye nodded at him as more tears came to her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo, one step closer. I wanted to write more team perspectives for this one, but I realize that got a bit muddled in the last chapters so I decided to just keep this purely between the two lovebirds. Perhaps if I get a better chance I'll throw some other perspectives in there. 
> 
> Not much to say this time around otherwise, except to say it's still a blast to write. I just love zombies!
> 
> Again, apologies for the wait. Things tend to get crazy for long periods of time for me (read: snow and studying don't mix), so I don't get a chance to really sit down and put all of my ideas to paper. Haven't forgotten about my other stories too!
> 
> Anyway, enough of the usual excuses. Leave a note if you've got some words! :)


End file.
